UnitedHealth shareholders reject plan to weigh in on executive pay

A proposal to allow UnitedHealth Group shareholders to make suggestions about executive pay was voted down by the same shareholders it would have empowered at the firm's annual meeting Monday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. The proposal failed with only forty-six percent of shareholders supporting it. "While 'say on pay' has come up before -- garnering a vote of 38.5 percent last year -- the finances of insurance companies are under more scrutiny than ever with the passage of health reform." The proposal would have allowed non-binding, advisory comments by shareholders on executive pay at each annual meeting (Yee, 5/24).

Phoenix Business Journal adds that the company's board opposed the proposal. But, shareholders of "several large companies, including General Mills, approved say on pay proposals in the past year" (Grayson, 5/24).

Kansas Business Journal reports that another proposal was rejected, too. It "would have required the company to annually report to shareholders its lobbying expenditures and activities. … Health Care for America Now, or HCAN, a grass-roots health care reform group, pledged in a release to get both issues on the UnitedHealth Group ballot again next year" (Sherry, 5/24).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.